//------------------------------//
// Ch. 09: The Spotless Mind 
// Story: Good Griff! 
// by Von Snootingham 
//------------------------------//


Good Griff!



Part 2 – The Road to Nowhere


Chapter 9 – The Spotless Mind


(In Which The Truth, No Matter How Improbable, Is Revealed. [Also: More Talking.])



So here we are again. Gather around for storytime.

We’ve been holed up in Liz’s empty for-sale house for four days now. It’s been four long, painfully boring days since Bones had her big, bad freakout and told us the truth. Or at least, it’s what she thinks is the truth. Frankly, I’m not so sure. But none of the rest of us have any proof to suggest she’s wrong, much less any other ideas.

In any case, Bones said a lot of real heavy shit, both before and after she “woke up”. When we pieced it all together, it sounded a little something like this:

Bones says she was having a dream about, I don’t know, like, field hockey or something. Must have been, since she said something about pucks in mid-summer or some crap. Whatever. She said she was doing something with robins’ bottoms when suddenly her dream shifted and she was running with a bunch of other ponies in a city called Manehattan. Yeah, I know. The pun makes me want to throw up too. She says they were running from that Discord asshole.

That lines up with what Flim said. He said he was reading and she was sleeping when she suddenly started moaning stuff about running and hiding. I heard some of that too after he came and got me. Then, of course, she went all psycho and started singing. She said what we heard was the song Discord was singing in her dream. 

That’s when she went into that weird trance thing and I ran out to get the others. Flim filled us in on what she said.        

“Don't you think the joker laughs at you?
I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.
See how they fly like Lucy in the sky? See how they run. Six blind mice.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot.
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign'd"

He said she paused there, then continued.

“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.”

When we told Bones later what she’d been saying, she recognized most of it as poetry, though the beginning was song lyrics. Fuck if I know what any of that means. When we asked her what she was dreaming when she recited all that, all she would say was, “the truth” and then she clammed up. But anyway, after that last bit of poetry, that’s when she woke up for real and told us she’d figured it all out.

She told us that she’d had a “zapped by Discord” dream too, just like me and Sunny, and that, like I’d said earlier, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” That it was all real. That what we all saw weren’t dreams, but memories. That this “Equestria” was a real place, and she’d seen it. She said while she sleeps, she sees visions of the past, the present and the future.

She honestly thinks that not only was a cartoon really real, but we were characters in it that got cursed by Discord; turned into humans for exactly twenty five years, and now we’re turning back. Problem is, like I said, we can’t prove her wrong. Even worse, everything points to her being right. Turns out Flim and Flam had the same kind of dream. Except they were in some place called Canterlot, setting up an automated cider-making facility when it happened. That, and the magic, and the fact that we all feel weirdly right like this, and that niggling feeling that we’ve got some connection pulling us together and moving us around like pawns.

I don’t quite buy it, and the jury’s still out, but it’s hard to argue with the evidence. I still think Bones knows more than she’s letting on, but she’s playing it close to the vest. I’ll never admit it, but every time we hear her sleep talking, I get kind of nervous. 

Yeah, that’s right. “Every time”. It wasn’t a one-time deal. She keeps having these episodes where she mumbles in her sleeps and sometimes she’ll kind of “wake up” into some sort of trance and lay some fortune cookie-style shit on us. It’s mostly, like, poetry or song lyrics or some other pop culture reference. I can’t help but shake the feeling it all has some deeper meaning, but mostly it just sounds completely random. 

It’s pretty fucking annoying.

Like, for example, we all calmed down from Bone’s big truthbomb and eventually all went to sleep. Then about dawn, she starts talking again. Doesn’t even wake up. Just, “The line in the sand is not to be crossed. The scale is weighed down.” I don’t think that was exactly it, but it was like that. I noticed Flim and Flam were gone and I looked outside just in time to see their Winnebago driving off, just like they said they were gonna.

So okay, we wrote them off and went about our business settling in. But when we checked the internet, we found out there’d been an incident the night before: there was this huge clusterfuck on the west coast where they thought there were missiles flying and all sorts of World War III type shit and the country was pretty much on lockdown. It was the middle of the night there, but it would have been about dawn here, just about the time Bones started her thing. Then that afternoon, who comes trucking back up the driveway, but the same carny jackasses?

After they came back, they told us more about themselves. For starters, they’re Canadian, but have dual citizenship. They have enough money that they don’t have to work, so they travel around in their RV, just touring the continent. They happened to be in the U.S. when they turned into ponies, so they tried to get back across the border to get home.

Problem was, there was this terrorist attack in Seattle about a week ago and the government beefed up border security a little. Nothing too bad. It wrecked their first try, but with the right finesse, they probably could have worked their way across that morning. That is, if the shit hadn’t just hit the fan a couple hours earlier and caused the military to close the borders up tighter than a nun’s asshole.

So Flim and Flam’s attempt to get home failed. They tried again on the second day. No dice. Now they’re staying here with us too; at least for now. If they hadn’t stopped to help us fix our tire, or if Bones hadn’t convinced them to stay the night, they probably would have made it. Did she know? Is that why she just wanted them to stay the one night? Because she knew it would be more than one? She did say that she’s actually seeing the future in her dreams, like when she saw meeting Flim and Flam before it actually happened. 

Naah. Personally, I think it’s a fat load. I mean, yeah, we magically turned into ponies (and a griffon), and she can levitate stuff with her mind, but seeing the future? Okay, yeah, it’s not any less believable, but come on. I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t want to believe it. Maybe I just don’t like people telling me what to do. I mean, if she knows what’s going to happen, then that means it’s already going to happen and I have no say in it. I don’t like being tied down by crap concepts like “fate”. I gotta fly free.

And I have been. Flying, that is. In my free time. (Great segue, right?) The five of us have had nothing but time on our hands. Well, I have time on my hands. The rest of them don’t have hands. Ha. Sunny’s been watching the Pony show and trying to make me join him. I’m embarrassed to admit I watched a couple episodes with him. It’s terribad. He’s also been dicking around in a little garden out back, trying to grow flowers and mushrooms. Flim and Flam… do Flim and Flam stuff. I dunno. The way they talk annoys me, so I avoid them, and they seem plenty happy to stay mostly in their RV. But they’re growing on me. Kinda.

Bones, when she isn’t sleeping, has been monitoring the internet (she asked Liz to get us some internets) for news of any others in our situation. Or at least that’s what she says. She’s probably just watching cat videos. And yesterday, I walked in on her in the middle of a Skype call. With video! And her sister was really excited to see me! The hell?

What part of “we have to stay hidden” did she not understand? She was the one who told me that in the first place. I don’t care that it was her little sister’s fifteenth birthday. I don’t care that they were really close and the pony show was something they both had in common and she had promised not to tell anyone. I don’t care that she said she was a big fan of mine and that she had the cutest little English accent. I’m Gilda! I don’t find things cute! Bones has been texting her family every day. She should just stick to that. We got into a big shouting match over it and I told her all of that. 

Thing was, the call was kinda still going and Bones’ sister called me a “big meanie”. I mean, is it mean to want to prot- Wait, I think I’ve gotten off track here. Where was I? Oh yeah. I was summarizing what we’ve been up to.

Everyone else has been lounging around doing their things, but me? I spend every chance I can get stretching my wings. I can’t go up in the air during the day, but the nights are mine. The house is right on the edge of a patch of forest about a mile wide and a half mile deep with a brook running through it. Beyond that is a freeway, then the city gets more dense north and west. During the day, I explore the woods at ground level, and I even tried fishing in the brook. No luck there. Too small, nothing to really fish. At night, I explore the area by air, mostly south and east. I only sleep maybe four hours at the most anymore.

While cruising the “neighborhood”, I discovered a housing development a couple roads away, where all the street names are birds like, “Chickadee”, “Woodthrush”, and “Mockingbird”. Always with the birds. That’s off a street called “Spear”. The Cloudsdale Guard used spears in my dr- well, memory, I guess. Then Spear connects to the road our house is on: Swift Street. “Swift” like the kind of bird, but also like the name I heard in my… memory. “Gilda Swiftwing”. I swear I’m not making this up. I feel like the universe is mocking this bird.

It’s not even humorously ironic like some of the puns I’ve had to deal with lately from this group of weirdos. It’s just weird. I know it makes me sound like a paranoid nutjob like Sunny, but that feeling of someone pulling our strings just won’t go away. There’s no way it’s coincidence that the place we shack up just happens to share my name and refer to birds. I mean, obviously it wasn’t random that we’re in this house. Liz brought us here. But I just mean it’s like something bigg- you know what, whatever. Like I said, I’m probably just being paranoid, and that’s definitely not like me. I’m not usually the delicate, cautious type.

Speaking of Liz, she didn’t come back until the next evening. Sunny was starting to think she’d forgotten about us until she came bearing gifts. She brought us some food, (She didn’t realize the rest of them are vegetarian now. I’ve got a lot of frozen pepperoni pizza to work through.) disposable dinnerware, and a couple inflatable mattresses. Bones at least was thankful for the last one, and whatever she did to get us internet like I said earlier.

But I don’t need no stinking mattress. I actually tried out Sunny’s “cloud bed” thing and holy shit, man. I’m not sure I can go back to regular beds. The first time was the other night when I was out flying around. I was getting tired, so I tested a cloud to see if I could take a break on it. Next think I knew, I was waking up as the sun was rising, drifting along on a cloud, no idea where where the fuck I was. Well, I figured it out, dragged that puppy back with me, and now I’m keeping it in the bathtub. I named it Claude. Liz isn’t happy about it.

Then again, Liz doesn’t seem happy about a lot. That first day, she just came, dropped off our supplies, and left, even though Sunny tried getting her to stay. I’m not sure she likes him very much. Or at least, not right now. On the second and third nights, she stayed and talked with Sunny a little while, and even sat and watched an episode with him, but I could tell it was strained. She doesn’t seem to like looking at him. And she avoids the rest of us pretty much altogether. When she sees magical stuff, like the unicorns levitating things or my cloud in the bathroom, she freezes up. She got mad and told me I “can’t keep clouds in houses”.

I responded, “Sure I can. See?” and grabbed a chunk of cloud. She just sputtered and walked out. Whatever.

So yeah, that brings us to now. It’s now the end of our fourth full day here in Vermont, and we’re getting a little stir crazy just waiting around. Thrilling, huh? I know, I know. I’m an awesome storyteller. Applause now, please.


»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»


Knock knock. Knock knock! “Yo! Yu hum?” I call out at the door to the Winnebago. My question is muffled by the toolbox I’ve got gripped in my beak.

“Who the devil is intermeddling in my business?” I hear from inside. Yeah, they’re home.

“Me!”

“Who?”

“ME!”

“The deuce do you want?”

“I hrehurning yer htooss!” I answer.

I hear the clip-clop of hooves coming to the door just before it’s thrown open. “WHAT!?” Flam shouts and stands there scowling at me. Wait, Flam? I still have a hard time telling them apart. Lessee, mustache? Check. Pink shirt? Check. Yeah, it’s Flam. “Oh, it’s only Gilda.”

I drop the toolbox near his hooves. “No, it’s that other griffon you know.” Seriously, who else could it have been? There are only five of us here, and it obviously wasn’t Sunny or his brother.

He rolls his eyes at me. “I’m really quite engrossed at the moment. Why have you come calling?” 

“I told you. I’m returning your tools,” I repeat, and point to the box.

“Well now you’ve returned them. Good day,” Flam dismisses me and slams the door. Jeez, how’s that for hospitality? I turn around and start toward the house. The door opens behind me. “Lazy Bones was asking after you. And I reckon supper has already begun,” Flam calls after me before slamming the door again. What bug crawled up his ass?

As I continue to the house, I think back on why I borrowed the tools in the first place. Earlier today, while out romping around the woods, I found the remains of an tiny shack, like an old playhouse. I had this great idea to fix it up and stick it in a tree so that if we were going to be staying here for a while, I could have my own little treehouse.

Problem was, the thing probably hadn’t been touched in forty years and it was little more than some rotted planks by now. And I didn’t have any tools. Or lumber. Or building experience. Well tools were easy enough to get, and I figured, hell, I was surround by fresh wood. Yeah, it didn’t go very well. It killed most of the day anyway.

As I enter the dining room, I find Bones and Flim sitting at a folding card table Liz brought for us the other day. They’re eating vegetables and some, I don’t know, oatmeal or some other pony food, and talking quietly to each other, Bones giggling. I gotta hand it to the guy; he works fast. He must be one charming motherfucker.

I clear my throat and they look up. Bones blushes at me. I plop my ass down on the floor next to the table and ask, “What are we having?”

“Yours is keeping warm in the oven,” Bones tells me. Oh. I know what that means. Pizza again. I get back up and, using a towel to protect my hand, retrieve my pizza. Guess Bones was right. Towels are handy. I set it down on the table, grab a pair of scissors to cut it, then sit back down and dig in.

In between bites, I turn to Flim. “Why’s your brother such a grouchy ass?”

“Grouchy, Gilda?” he quirks an eyebrow at me. “Why, that simply doesn’t sound a snippet like Flam.” He humms a bit. “Oh. Oh my. You didn’t intermeddle in his inventing, did you?”

Guilty. “Yeessss?”

Flim shakes his head. “Eureka! The answer appears. While I’m chronically the more charismatic of the couple, Fran is ordinarily simply sweet as sugar, if a smidge shy. But when she’s wrapped up in work… watch out!”

“What work?” I know I probably don’t want to know, but I ask anyway.

“Why… ingenuity! Inspiration! Imagination! Innovation!” he announces with wonder in his voice.

“Huh?”

“Invention, my little, dizzy dodo bird!” he grins. I was right. This is one charming motherfucker. He can insult me to my face and make it sound like a cute little pet name. But I’m still gonna bust his face.

Before I can, though, Bones cuts me off, “What do you mean ‘invention’? Is Flam an inventor?

“Indeed!” Flim answers.

“What, like Thomas Edison? Who’s specifically an ‘inventor’ anymore?” I ask as disrespectfully as I can. I’m still annoyed at him.

“Why, we are!” he answers. “Though, I must admit Flam is the ninety nine percent perspiration. I’m just the one percent inspiration. Also, the advertising agent. I’m one hell of a hawker, if’n I do say so myself.”

“Have you made anything we’d have heard of?” asks Bones, intrigued.

“I should say so!” Flim bellows and stomps his hooves. “I have a hunch you’ve heard of the Kitchen Witch?”

I haven’t. “I actually have,” says Bones. “It’s that food processor thing they’re always playing those corny infomercials for. The ones with that gangly ginger.”

“Gangly?” Flim puts on a hurt look and holds his hooves over his heart. “Ow! My pride! It pains me! I thought myself pretty. Pulchritudinous even.” Okay, that’s not a word.

Bones is drinking a glass of juice, but when she hears this, she spit-takes. “THAT WAS YOU!?”

Flim chuckles. “Just put your ingredients in the top," he recites with a practiced flair and then starts humming a little jingle. “It slices and dices! Peels and chops! Blends, mixes, juices! It won't stop!" He waves his forelegs with a big flourish. “There you have it folks! This little miracle processes your food exactly like you want it EVERY TIME! Like magic! Kitchen Witch!”

Oh my god, man, oh my god. I’m embarrassed just watching it. I can’t imagine being the one doing it. “You actually did that on TV?” I ask him in disbelief, “Like, with people watching?”

Flim just shrugs. “Eh, it’s a living.”

“Still, I can’t imagine doing that in front of people, much less on TV,” I shake my head.

“Is it an issue?” asks Flim, sounding insulted.

Open beak, insert paw. I hold up my hands. “No, not really an issue. It’s just that people have eyes. And can see with them. I’d be really embarrassed to act like an idiot on TV,” I reassure him. Smooth. See? I can be charming too.

“Plus, Gilda, there’s the pay. I’d imagine he did get a decent paycheck out of it,” reasons Bones.

“I didn’t do it for money,” Flim says.

“You didn’t?” Bones asks, “Then w-”

“I did it for a shitload of money! Mountains!” Flim smirks. Of course. I guess we walked into that one. He continues, “Why shell out the simoleons to someone else to sell the stock? Fran fabricates the featured thingamajig, Fred flaunts it. We largely do the labor ourselves and keep the lion’s share of the loot.”

“That’s sensible, I guess,” offers Bones.

“You guess? Conjecture?” Flim cracks a cocky grin, “We’re confirmed for cash continually, so we can cruise the continent, cavorting and carousing to our content.” He levitates his bowl over to the sink, then starts to walk out of the kitchen. “‘You guess,’” he laughs as he steps out.

I hope he doesn’t expect me to clean up after him. Just because a girl still has hands, she’s gotta do all the work? These ponies are taking me for granted.

Bones and I look at each other. “Sooo…” “Yeahhh…” we both start. I stop and wait for her to talk. She does the same. We laugh awkwardly. “That was weird,” she finally says.

“What? Flim? Or this just now?”

“Yes.”

I chuckle and we settle into a comfortable silence as finish off our dinners. When we’re done, we start to clean up, Bones needs to push a chair up to the sink to be able to see. “So how was your day?” she asks me as we scrub our plates.

“Eh. You know,” I say noncommittally. “You?”

“Oh, you know,” she responds, “alright. I’m just hanging around, being Cassandra.” I don’t know, and I’m not gonna ask. I can tell she wants me to. She wants to be able to go all professor and yak my ear off about some book or something. I’m not going to give in.

After a few seconds she looks disappointed, but quickly recovers. “So what did you do?”

“Nothing special. Thought about making a treehouse. Saw some deer. I kinda wanted to try catching one, but I didn’t.”

Bones turns and looks at me keenly. “It wasn’t, um, that again, was it?”

I wave her off. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I just kinda wanted to try venison. It was all me. But I was worried that if I did go after one, it might happen again, and I’d lose control, so I didn’t.”

“Oh, you’re thinking ahead. I’m proud of you,” she says. Weirdly enough, she doesn’t sound snarky at all when she says it. “I’m glad you’re alright,” she smiles and nuzzles the side of her head into my shoulder. Whoa what?

I back away from her a little. “What was that?”

I can see Bones blush on the inside of her ears. “OH! Um… must be… some pony instinct. Yeah.”

Yeah. Weird. We’re done cleaning, so I think I’m going to get away from this awkwardness. Huh, speaking of awkward… “Hey, where’s Sunny? Isn’t he eating?” I ask.

“Come on! Aren’t you ready yet!?” Sunny calls from the other room.

Bones’ embarrassed look evaporates and leaves only deviousness. She points her hoof towards the living room. “Cartoons.”

Uggghhhh. “Oh, would you look at the time!” I exclaim as I point at my blank wrist. “It’s time for my evening flight.” I start for the back door.

Bones catches my tail in her magic. “Ah ah ah! You know you shouldn’t fly just after eating. You’ll get a stomach cramp.”

Sunny appears in the doorway with the laptop balanced on his back, held steady by his wings. “Come on. I have the episode all queued up.”

I narrow my eyes at them. “You two planned this, didn’t you?”

Bones just bats her eyelashes and smiles innocently at me. “Why, I have no idea what you mean.” She starts dragging me backwards by the tail toward the living room with Sunny nudging me with his head.

“Smile! Smile! Smile!” he cheers.

I groan, hang my head, and resign myself to my fate.


»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»~»


Dammit, no matter how many towels I use, how long I use the blow dryer, or how many times I run the brush through, my fur is still wet. And don’t get me started on my feathers. Keeping them clean and dry is almost more trouble than they’re worth. Almost. Flying is fucking rad.

Those Judases forced me to sit and watch three episodes of the pony show, none of which had Gilda, err, me in them. There was one with Flim and Flam though. So that was kind of weird to see. I still would have liked to see more me episodes, though. Apparently I’m only in those two I already saw, the one where I’m- you know what, that’s too weird. I’m just gonna refer to the cartoon character like she wasn’t me. Even though she was. “Is”? Whatever. There’s the one near the beginning where she’s a total dick and then the one near the end where she’s gotten better and she makes up with Dash.

Oh man, I wonder if the people who made the show knew about how Gilda really felt about Dash. If I remember my, well, memory right; the one I saw in my dream; Gilda was totally crushing on her until they had their falling out. Bet that wouldn’t have made it into a kids’ show. Come to think of it, how DID they know about us? Whatever; don’t think about these things too hard, Gayle. And now I’ve gotten off track.

Right, so after being forced to watch cartoons, I took off for my evening flight. I spent a few hours cruising the countryside, letting my mind (and my body) just wander. I’m no philosopher, but there’s something really calming about being alone, looking down at the earth from twenty thousand feet. I gotta admit, I’ve been a lot less stressed lately, even with this whole situation. I think I could get used to it. 

Well, that, and what I did afterward. After calm-y time is badass o’clock. Tonight, I really pushed myself, taking myself to my limits and beyond. The speed and adrenaline are fucking addicting. I can’t believe I ever got by with just running. I can’t believe I thought I was fast before. We’re talking triple digits here. Like, commercial airliner fast.

But I had to stop eventually. I started to get really hot and was panting hard, which made me realize I can’t sweat anymore to cool myself down. I came home and took a long, cold shower and now I feel much better. Except that no matter how fucking hard I try, I can’t get dry. Hair dryers are great, but only if you only have worry about a little hair on your head. A full body fur coat takes forever. A brush is nice, but doesn’t actually absorb moisture. And even these giant, fluffy, white towels can only do so much and are painful if you rub your feathers the wrong way. It’s a pain in the ass, let me tell ya.

So it’s like that, still moist in some places, fur clinging to my skin, my crest feathers hanging limp around my face, rubbing a towel across my chest, that I enter Bones’ room to check on her. She’s usually asleep by now and I gotta make sure Flim isn’t taking advantage of her. Hell, I don’t think I’d put it past Sunny either. 

“Humina…”

To my surprise, Bones is still awake, staring at me with her jaw on the floor and the inside of her ears burning red. Oy, I’m not that ugly, am I?

“Take a picture, why don’t ya,” I spit in annoyance.

Bones shakes her head and turns away. She’s squirming a little bit as she takes some deep breaths and does her calming exercise. Huh. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was getting all hot and bothered over me. But that obviously couldn’t be. Then, I notice she’s got her laptop next to her and a bunch of scraps of paper laid out in front of her.

“What all this?” I ask.

She looks thankful for the change of subject as she answers, “They’re tarot cards. ...Well sort of. They’re not official or anything. I made them myself.”

That surprises me. For someone who was so pro-science and dead-set anti-magic, this definitely seems like something Bones wouldn’t put any stock in. So I have to ask, “Really? I didn’t think that was your thing. You know how to tell fortunes?”

“Errr… not as such, no,” she admits and rubs the back of her head. “I’m trying to learn. I looked it up online, drew my own deck, and now I’m giving it a shot. It seemed like something I may as well try, what with precognitive dreams and all.”

This again. I roll my eyes, but don’t argue. This has been a sticking point for us the last few days. “Okay, you have fun. I’ll just watch.” Really, I’m just waiting for her to fall asleep so I can use her computer to surf the net.

Over the next half hour Bones repeatedly shuffles her tarot deck, draws cards, places them in lines, and consults her computer. It looks completely random, but she seems to be getting some meaning out of it. For example, one time she draws The World, then Temperance, then The Sun, then The Devil, then Death, then Wheel of Fortune, then The Tower, then Temperance again, then The Hanged Man, then Death again, then Judgement, and finally The World again. She narrows her eyes, hmmms a little bit, and nods her head. It’s all Greek to me.

She just keeps at it. She draws The Chariot, The High Priestess, The Fool, The Magician, The Moon, and Temperance together. She pokes each of the first four and nods, but gets surprised when she notices The Moon. “Oh? Interesting.”

She’ll pull two or three cards, look at them, look at her computer for meaning, and make a little noise. The High Priestess and Wheel of Fortune. “Hmyes.” Strength and The Hanged Man. “Ohno.” The Hermit and The Tower. “Hmm?” The Fool, The Moon, and The Lovers. “Aww,” and a giggle.

But there are two combinations that keep coming up again and again and they seem to bother her the most. The Chariot and The High Priestess keep coming up together, sometimes with The Lovers and sometimes with Death. Bones seems equally shocked by both, but Death also seems to scare her. She’s starting to get pretty worked up. This is just silly now.





“Okay, Miss Cleo, why don’t you put that away for tonight?” I suggest.

Her head shoots up and she looks over at me in surprise. “Oh! You’re still here.” She looks down at the cards and her eyes go wide. She looks back to me, than back to the cards. “Oh. Um…” she snatches the cards up in her magic and mixes them all up. “So….”

“Sew buttons, bitch. Come on, put the hokus pokus away and go to bed,” I tell her.

“Hokus pokus?” Bones narrows her eyes. “You still don’t believe it’s real?”

“Four days ago, neither did you. For someone who’s all about science and shit, it’s weird that you’re suddenly so into this now,” I point out. She opens her mouth to argue, but I hold up my hands in defense. “Hey, I’m just sayin’.”

“I never said I was ‘all about science’. I believe what I can see with my own eyes. Now that’s it’s real and in front of me, how can I deny it?” Bones reasons.

“Yeah, well, you can see a magician make an elephant disappear with your own eyes. Doesn’t mean it actually happened,” I argue.

Bones narrows her eyes. “Are you accusing me of lying to you?”

“NO! For fuck’s sake,” I mutter and run my fingers through my hai- feathers. It’s uncomfortable. I guess I won’t be doing that anymore. “I’m saying that just because it looks real doesn’t mean it is and you shouldn’t take it so seriously.”

Bones snorts and cross her forelegs. For her, that’s pretty much a giant billboard that says “I’m digging in and being stubborn”. “Well, I DO take it seriously,” she starts. “Deathly serious. My dreams are real. They tell me things when I’m asleep. But it’s passive and I can’t control it. The cards are so I can see actively. It may sound silly, but they don’t lie. Heart of the cards and all that nonsense. It’s all the proof I need to believe it, and you should too,” she accuses and points a hoof at me.

This time, I snort. “Okay, fine. I know you do have weird dreams. And I believe that you believe that it means something. But I still don’t buy this fate crap. No one decides what I do but me.” 

“Yes, you do. What you do in the future is your choice and those choices matter,” she tells me, gesturing with her left hoof. Then she lowers it and switches to the right hoof. “But fate plays its part too. And you do believe in it. Of course you do. How can you not? You just don’t realize it right now.”

I don’t really appreciate her telling me what I think, so I’m arguing the point. “I really don’t. You say you believe it because you’ve seen the proof with your own eyes. Well, I haven’t seen it.”

“Maybe if you would tell us!”

“I- I can’t…” she stammers. “No one can be told. Especially not you.”

I shake my head and snort. “So what? You’re gonna pull the ‘lone wolf’ act? That’s stupid.”

“That’s rich coming from you.” she spits.

Ouch. That’s just spite. “Yeah, well you have fun being by yourself,” I scowl and turn to leave.

Just as I’m at the door, Bones calls after me, “Tell me about Ann.”

...What?

In the blink of an eye, I spin around and I’m back in the room, looming over Bones. My face is so close to hers I can see the crazed look in my eyes reflected in hers. “How do you know about her?” I demand.

“I’ve seen her.”

“WHERE?”

“In my dreams.”

Oh. She. Did. NOT. I dig my talon into her chest, almost enough to break skin. “How dare you. You probably heard me say that name somewhere and you used it to try to make me believe your bullshit? That’s fucking low,” I growl.

“No. I mean, yeah,” she backpedals. “I’ve heard you slip and say her name a couple of time. But that’s not it. I saw her in my dreams. She had blond hair with red streaks.” What? That’s right. How- “And you were there, except younger. Human you. You were sitting by the ocean, holding her hand. She whispered something in your ear.”

I fall back hard on my rump as the angers flood out of me and tears well up in my eyes. “How?” I croak.

“I told you. My dreams show me things,” Bones explains as she sidles up next to me to comfort me. “For now, let’s just call it ‘past, present, future’. Sometimes it’s the future; or at least possible futures. Sometimes it’s something happening somewhere in the present. And sometimes it’s something that happened in the past. Oh, and sometimes it’s just dreams. Not anything real; just very vivid stories.”

“What did you see?” I whisper.

“I was cuddled up with her- I mean, you were. Sometimes I was watching from the outside, and sometimes the perspective of the dream switched and I was in your place. Have you ever had a dream as someone else? Where you weren’t you?” She asks me and tilts her head.

“I… I dunno… Maybe,” I answer.

“Well this was like that. Anyway, it’s beside the point.” She continues, “You were cuddled up with her on a dock, watching the sun set over the sea. The two of you just sat there for a while, then you kissed her and she whispered something in your ear-”

“We’ll always have this. Right here. No matter what happens, no matter how many times we fly away from here, or how far, we’ll always have this,” we both finish at the same time.

I sit there for a minute, just remembering. Bones lets me, not saying anything more. Finally, I whisper, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you telling me this? I clarify.

“You wanted me to tell you what I saw; what I know,” she answers. “This is what I see.”

“Alright, fine. I guess it’s not all bullshit,” I admit. I wipe my hand down my face. It comes away wet. “Jesus, Bones. You had to bring her up. You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”

“Well… tell me about her.”

I sigh deeply and lay down. Bones settles down next to me. “Ann Bauer. She was the first girl I ever loved. I was fifteen. The summer after my freshman year of high school, my parents decided they were going to buy a beach house out in Montauk and we were going to spend the whole summer there. I wanted to stay home in the city and hang around. I was bored out in the sticks. Then I met her.

I went for a run down the beach one evening. Ann was working in a snack stand on the beach. She was just closing up when I went past. I stepped on a shell and fell. She helped me up. When I saw her face, I swear to god, there were actual fireworks going off. She was beautiful. Well you saw her. Blond hair with those red streaks. I thought that was so cool. She had just the most amazing, confident smile and oh, that ass. She was short, but she was scrappy. She could be a badass when she needed to, but she could also be really kind. And funny and smart and fearless. Even though I just met her, she felt like an old friend I’d known her for years.

We spent that whole summer together. We were inseparable. I tried to get a job at the snack stand too so we could be together when she had to work. But my parents wouldn’t let me. They said I was there for vacation and that ‘such menial work’ was ‘beneath’ me. So I just hung around the stand all day keeping her company. 

I never knew I could feel that way about someone. Ann was so perfect and I loved her so much for it that I felt like she was just inside me, taking up all the space until there was nothing left of me; just this wonderful mixture of the best of the two of us. It sounds weird when I say it like that, but that’s the closest I can come to describe it.”

“What happened to her?” Bones asks.

“The summer ended. We both had to go home. But we agreed that we weren’t over and we would see each other again as soon as we could. That’s what you saw. Me and Ann on our last night. We went home, but we kept in contact every day.

Every day we talked. But after, um, it must have been about two and a half months or so since it was maybe two weeks into November, suddenly I couldn’t get ahold of her. The same the next day and the next. After three days of not being able to contact her and worrying, my phone rang in the middle of the night. At first all I could hear was sniffling. I was about to hang up when someone finally said something. It was Ann. She sounded so broken, not like the Ann I knew all summer. All she said was, ‘Meet me in Montauk.’ Then she hung up and didn’t answer when I tried to call her back.

What else could I do? I took my dad’s car and rushed out to Montauk.”

“You took the the car?” Bones asks in disbelief. “You weren’t even old enough to have a license.”

“You think I gave a fuck? Driving’s not so hard. I could do it well enough to get there,” I explain.

“Why didn’t you just ask your parents to take you? It was an emergency, after all.” she questions.

“You don’t know my parents,” I counter. “And they didn’t know I had a girlfriend. Not yet anyway.”

“So what happened?”

I continue, “I drove all the way out there without stopping. She didn’t tell me where exactly to meet her, but I knew there was only one place it could be. I went out to our dock and there was Ann, sitting there dangling her legs off the end.

She had a black eye and she was crying. She told me she was having trouble at home. Her dad was a drunk and sometimes he’d get angry… Her mom was a teacher and the two of them spent the summer staying with her mom’s sister in Montauk. She never mentioned it all that summer. I guess maybe she was trying to forget about it for a while. They hoped her dad would get better after a little time away, but he only got worse. That night, her dad had hit her and she ran away.

I promised I’d never leave her again. It was a stupid thing to promise. I guess I knew I couldn’t keep it, but in that moment, I just want to stay there with her and protect her forever. 

We stayed in my parents’ beach house, just the two of us, for three days. That’s how long it took for them to find us. The cops came and knocked on the door and we knew it was all over. My parents were furious. Not only did I steal their car and take it for an underage joyride, but that’s how they found out I was gay. They didn’t take it well. I tried to explain to them why I did it, that Ann needed help. But they didn’t care. They were just pissed at me.

Ann tried to help. Even after all the shit she’d been through, she still tried to shift all the blame onto herself so I wouldn’t be in as much trouble. God, she was so loyal. I don’t know if my parents bought it, but they told me they’d make sure I’d never ‘be bothered by that girl again’ so I wouldn’t be ‘distracted from my studies.’”

“What did they do? Bones asks hesitantly.

“You already know,” I respond. “They yanked me out of my school and sent me to the private academy upstate.”

Bones nuzzles my side, I guess to comfort me. “I’m sorry. That’s awful that they’d do that and give you no choice in the matter.”

“Oh no, you don’t know my parents. They did give me a choice. When I begged them and told them they couldn’t make me go, they agreed; they couldn’t make me to go. It would have to be my choice to go. Obviously, right away I said I wouldn’t. But then they told me my other option. They could either send me to the private academy, or they could press charges for grand theft auto. Wasn’t much of a choice.”

Bones rolls onto her side and wraps her forelegs around me in a warm pony hug. It’s kinda weird for her to be this touchy-feely. Must be the pony instincts. I’m normally against this sort of thing, but right now I think I need it. “What happened to Ann?” Bones asks.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “My parents made good on their promise. I don’t know how they did it, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never get in contact with her again.”

Bones looks shocked. “You haven’t heard from her since they tore you apart? You never found out what happened to her with her father? But-”

“You think I didn’t try?” I interrupt. “You think it hasn’t eaten away at me? I failed again. Someone I cared about needed me and I failed them again.” Again? Oh yeah. Cloudsdale. Now that feeling I’ve had all these years makes sense.

“I’m sorry,” Bones apologizes. “Thank you for telling me this. I’m honored. Ann sounds like she was pretty amazing, the way you talk about her,”

“She really was.”

“I’ve never heard you talk about anyone else like that. And I’ve seen you with quite a number of girls,” she observes.

Excuse me? What’s that supposed to mean?

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she backpedals. Dammit, I said I was going to try to work on not thinking out loud. “It’s just, in the three years I’ve known you, you’ve had probably close to twenty girlfriends-” Jeez. When she puts it like that, it sounds like a lot. “-and I’ve never heard you talk about any of them the way you talk about Ann.”

“Yeah, so?”

I’ll bite. “Although what?”

“I notice you’ve never talked about Ellen that way,” she says sagely.

...Oh shit. I’m awful. I garbage. I’m worse than garbage. I’m the garbage’s garbage. I haven’t even thought about Ellen in days. I say so, “I haven’t even been thinking about her at all. I’m a pretty bad girlfriend, aren’t I?”

She nods her head slightly. “I hate to agree, but I think probably yes.” Jeez, don’t sugarcoat it for me or anything, Bones. She cocks her head. “Do you mind if I play therapist for a minute?” She asks.

I’m too emotionally exhausted to argue, so I let her. “Okay. Sure.”

I can see Bones change into professor mode. Crap, now I’m in for it. She clears her throat and begins. “Ann was your first love. She opened up a whole new world for you. You idolized her. Then you were harshly separated and you never got any closure from that. So now you’ve placed her on a pedestal. Every girl since then has been a subconscious attempt to fill that Ann-sized hole that’s doomed to fail. You can’t help but compare them and they don’t stand a chance.”

That’s not true. That’s a load of horseshit. That’s… holy crap. That actually makes a lot of sense. “How do you know that?” I ask at the ceiling.

Bones gives a rueful chuckle. “Trust me, right now I know you better than you know yourself. Just let go. None of that matters right now.”

“Things matter. Don’t get all emo on me again,” I warn.

“I’m not,” she assures me. “Right now, don’t worry about that past. All you have to worry about is the future. How it affects you and how you can affect it.”

Is this really the same person from four days ago who told me that nothing in the universe matters? This barely sounds like Steve anymore. It’s hardly even like the Lazy Bones from that morning in the tent. Is this transformation really changing our minds that much? Have I changed and I haven’t noticed it?

Wait, I’ve got a more interesting question. I turn my head to face Bones. “So how’d you get to be such an expert on relationships? I’ve never seen you with a girl. Do you turn into some secret hotshot playboy when I’m not looking?” I tease and elbow her in the ribs.

I’m expecting her to just roll her eyes and give me some sort of “Ha ha, very funny. I’m so smart,” comeback. Instead, she gets all panicky. “What? No! Uh, I- I mean, yes! I’ve been with plenty of girls! Loads! Hundreds!”

“Hundreds?”

“Oh. I mean, no! Not hundreds,” Bones stammers and bites her lip. 

Oh no. No no no. Oh my god, this is too perfect. Is Bones a virgin? This sure got me out of my funk. It takes all of my willpower to keep a straight face and not break into the shiteating grin (Or as whatever you call it with a beak.) of a cat cornering a mouse. It’s time to go in for the kill. “So… how many girls have you been with? Ballpark it for me.”

She wiggles away from me. “Uhh… Uhmmm…”

I keep my voice innocent and curious,“Fifty? Ten? ...One?”

“ZERO!” Bones blurts. “You’ve got me! I’m a virgin! Are you happy now?”

I shake my head in fake disappointment. “That’s just sad. Pay for it!”

Now it’s her turn to get depressed. “I was too scared.”

“Oh come on, Bones. Really?” I try to encourage her, “What about that girl who always came to the bar with us? Mona or whatever?”

“It’s Mandy,” she corrects me.

“Yeah her. She was totally into you. I could tell. Why didn’t you hook up with her?” I wonder.

“She… she wasn’t my type,” Bones mumbles.

“What was wrong with? Too short? Too tall? Too brunette? Tits not big enough?” I rattle off.

“Shewasagirl,” she whispers too fast to understand.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Shewasagirl,” she repeats just as inaudibly. 

“Didn’t quite catch that.”

“SHE WAS A GIRL! I’m GAY, alright! I liked guys but I was too scared of coming out to ever act on it! I’ve never been in a relationship! I’m a gay virgin loser who’s never been with anyone and is always going to be alone and now I’m a pony so there goes the rest of my life along with it and now you know so you know what a freak I am!” Bones rants without breathing. Finally she finishes and lays there huffing and puffing, trying to catch her breath and keep herself from crying.

“Oh. That’s it?” I ask casually.

Bones stares at me in disbelief. “‘That’s it’?”

I make a throwaway gesture. “I thought you were going to say you got turned on by horses or something equally weird. Like you were a furry or a eunuch or a mormon.”

“You… you don’t think I’m weird?” she asks hopefully.

“Hell yeah I think you’re weird!” I say and slap her on the back. She recoils a little. “But not because you were gay. I’m gay! Fuck man, what have we been talking about?”

She gives a nervous little chuckle. “You’re really okay with it?” She sighs. “I… think it feels good to finally get this off my chest.”

“Shit man, why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I laugh. “I work at a gym. I could have set you up with a goddamn smorgasbord of cock.” Bones blushes and looks mortified. “Well at least you’ve got somebody now.”

Bones smiles, but then it turns to a frown and a furrowed brow. “Wait, what?”

“Personally, I don’t really see it. He’s way too over-the-top “Pepe LePew loverboy”. But whatever makes you happy,” I tell her and chuckle. “Actually, at first I thought you and Sunny were going at it.”

“What!?” Bones screams. She rolls on her back and kicks all four legs wildly in the air,. “EWWWWWWWW!”

Wow. Stronger reaction than I thought. “What-”

“He reminds me of my little brother!

“I thought you had a little sister,” I say, trying to change an obviously sore subject.

“I have both. Who says I can’t? Why would you think I was fucking Sunny? Wait…” She pauses and rolls back on her side to face me. “You think I’m fucking Flim?”

I look away. “Um. Not anymore I guess.”

“WHY?”

“He’s always getting all ‘mon ami’ and shit around you and then you blush and get all giggly,” I try to explain. 

“He’s just funny! Is that a crime?” she says in exasperation.

“Hey, you just said you liked guys,” I defend.

“LikED! Past tense!” Bones shouts. “My, ahem, tastes flipped sides the same time I did.”

“Huh?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “I like girls now!” She shakes her and a mutters, “God, that’s so weird to say.”

“Oh. Then congratulations,” I grin. “We girls are much hotter. Consider it an upgrade.”

Bones sighs. “I dunno. It’s been so confusing. Like for example, you remember that pushy wally in the sporting goods store? Normally, I’d have been super attracted to him. He was confident and athletic. And he was actually coming on to me. That would have been a dream come true in the past, but suddenly I didn’t feel anything. And then I’ve been- err, nevermind,” she stops abruptly.

Now she’s gotten all flustered again. It’s pretty cute. “Okay, well that’s fine,” I reassure her. “Take your time. You’ll figure it out. But while we’re on the subject, I know you haven’t run into any, um, mares to compare, but do you have a type? I can keep an eye out for a potential girlfriend for ya,” I offer with a smirk and a wink.

Somehow she gets more nervous and distracted. She’s squirming, her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water, and she looks me up and down. If I were someone less cool, I might even say it was “adorable”. But like I said, I’m too cool for that.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to stump ya,” I tease her.

“Oh. Right. Um,” she mumbles. “No, I don’t like anyone. Err, I mean, I don’t have a person I like. I mean, a type! A type I like!”

This is really getting to her. Maybe I should be nice and let up on her.

Nah. One for the road. “Hey, I know, Bones! Let’s call up that Mandy chick and see if she’s up for a little horseplay.”

The insides of her ears go red hot again and she rolls over, knocking over the stack of tarot cards and buries her face in her hooves. “Oh my god…”

“Buck up there, lady killer. I’m sure she’ll love ya,” I chuckle and pat her on the back. I think she’s had enough. I’ll let her off the hook for now. I stand up and stretch my back. She watches me with a strange look in her eye. Then she looks down at the floor. I follow her gaze. She’s looking at the stack of tarot cards she knocked over. Only one of them fell face up: The Lovers. She looks conflicted about something. “Night, Bones,” I say and start towards the exit. I walk out into the hall and turn around to close the door. She’s still staring at that card, but then looks up and sees me leaving. She glances back down at the card and a wave of resolution washes over her face.

“W-wait, Gil.”

I just cannot leave this room tonight, can I? I step back inside. “Yeah?”

“It’s… umm… I…” she fumbles for words. “Well… I- I kinda do. Have a type, I mean.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s, uh…” she stammers, fidgeting. “I kinda… already said it. I like...” she mutters quiet enough that if I didn’t have enhanced senses I wouldn’t have been able to hear it. She blushes and shakes her head. “Oh, forget it!”

Hey, she’s the one that called me back, so she’s not getting away that easy. She must be a glutton for punishment. “Uh uh. You wanted to tell me, so you’re gonna tell me. Spit it out.”

“She…”

Oh ho! There’s someone already? “‘She’? You have a girlfriend already? You seeing some sweet little pony behind our backs?” I needle her.

Bone buries her face in her hooves again, her ears glowing red. “Oh jesus.”

“Let me guess! Her name is Honey Pie.”

“Kill me now.”

“You have her stashed somewhere around here?” I walk over to the closet and throw it open. “Nope, not in here.”

“Oh for- You idiotic, overgrown turkey!” she blurts as she stomps a hoof. “I don’t have a secret marefriend!”

“Ah, but you said ‘she’. Like a specific person,” I point out.

“Yes, there is a girl that I like,” she admits. She says the word “girl” like it’s a swear word in a foreign language. “She just doesn’t know it.”

Ooo, a secret crush, huh? “Is it someone I know?” I ask.

“Uhhh…” Bones mutters and shifts uneasily. She doesn’t meet my eyes, her own shifting back and forth before finally settling on that one tarot card again. She straightens back up. “Yes. Yes, you know this person.”

Okay. Hmmm… Who could that be? Who do we both know? “You were pretty clear you didn’t like Sunny or Flim. That pretty much means Flam too,” I try to deduce. Fucking Sherlock Holmes up in here. “And they’re guys anyway and you’re playing for my team now. Not your friend Mandy?”

Bones is staring at me with a nervous smile and her hoof on her card. She slowly shakes her head “no”. Hmm, could it be Ellen? That would be awkward.

Wait a second. “‘And you’re playing for my team now…’” I repeat. My eyes go wide. Hers do too.

Holy shit, no way. I think back to the way she’s been acting around me lately. She’s been all giggly and blushing and rubbing up on me. And she did keep calling me back into her room. I stand there with my beak hanging open.

I’ve figured it out and Bones has figured out that I’ve figured it out. She jumps up and blurts, “Oh blimey, would you look at the time! It’s very late and we’re all very tired here so it’s time for bed. Good night!” She dashes over to me and starts pushing me out the door with her head, using her magic for some extra pushing power.

“Wait wait wait.”

“Nope! No wait! Good night!” she frantically shouts. When I’m in the hall, she nuzzles my side then slams the door in my face.

I try the knob, but it’s locked. I knock.

“No thank you, we don’t want any housekeeping,” Bones calls through the door.

“Bones, we GOTTA talk about this,” I demand.

“Sorry, can’t hear you! I’m asleep!”

I sigh. “Lazy Bones…”

“Gil…” I barely hear her whisper. “I hope you have pleasant dreams. I know I am.” With that I can hear her trot away from the door.

I stand there and just stare at the door, trying to process what just happened. What she just said. I lightly touch the spot where she nuzzled my side. Bones and me? I try to picture that. 

Shit. Now I’m going to need another cold shower.


/_‾_‾_‾TO BE


CONTINUED‾_‾_‾_〉